Loving Healing Press

Regaining Control: When Love Becomes a Prison

admin — Tue, 01 May 2007 02:44:00 +0000

Sad to say, I wasn’t really too surprised by Tami Brady’s intended bombshell statistic that only 1% of the world’s assets are in the name of women. It has been my personal experience that I’ve met very few women who aren’t either overt or covert aggressive, control freaks, or - at the other end of the extreme - fearful and dependent. Both types are insecure. Globally speaking, it’s still a man’s world out there, although thank goodness for Oprah patiently guiding jittery herds of women toward a higher consciousness!

Anyone who has experienced how freeing it is to make her own money, express herself and feel proud of her accomplishments wishes all woman could enjoy the feeling of personal power. To me, it is the feeling of really and truly being alive. So, in my opinion, any book that helps women lacking in self-confidence to step up to the plate of positive and balanced empowerment is a welcome contribution to the self-help section in the bookstores.

Tami Brady’s _When Love Becomes a Prison) is a well-organized quick read featuring workbook pages where the reader can list her strengths and weaknesses, make a detailed portrait of her perfect world and evaluate how she feels on a number of issues. The title of the book at first made me think it was just about abuse, but the book really has to do with breaking down myths about dependence and independence. And learning how to free one’s unique inner spirit.

Brady writes, “Specifically, we’ll focus on reversing situations of unhealthy dependence in order to break free of control, regain self-esteem and increase self-reliance.” That’s a huge journey and this book is a helpful step along the way. It also features a dynamite resource list and bibliography.

Written by: Cheryl Reeves, April 30th 2007

Life Skills: Improve the Quality of Your Life with Metapsychology

admin — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 20:00:00 +0000

By Marian K. Volkman

Loving Healing Press

Life Skills serves as a great introduction to the nebulous field of metapsychology, a variation on the newly popular field of positive psychology. The book attempts to use the tools of psychoanalysis to provide a guide for emotional self-improvement. And it succeeds. With chapters focusing on broad quality of life issues, treatment of traumatic stress (not the diagnosable Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which really should be treated by a professional, but the everyday trauma we all have faced), understanding emotion, improving relationships and enhancing life awareness, this book provides a broad approach to life-improvement without feeling like anything is missing.

Every psychological term is well defined for a lay audience. The layout, with bullets, boxed quotes, and effective use of bolding, is interesting and engaging. Frequent exercises are also engaging; this reviewer couldn’t help but work several as I attempted to read the book cover-to-cover. This book is worth your time and is worth taking time to really explore the exercises.

Written by: Janine Peterson Wonnacott, March 7th 2007

The Complete Being: Finding and Living the Real You

admin — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 04:02:00 +0000

By Tami Brady

Loving Healing Press

The Dalai Lama once said, “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” In her book, The Complete Being, Tami Brady echoes this mantra. Approaching the subject from an anthropological perspective, Brady adeptly ties our present identity crisis to the gradual loss of a cultural identity. In her examination, she discusses four aspects required to become a “complete being”: mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical. Delving more deeply into these individual components of the human condition is, according to Brady, necessary because “the game of life has been modified to a point where the rules of the past can no longer adequately tell you how to play the game.”

Brady shares the simple wisdom of this text through a tightly focused, succinct examination of what it takes to become a fulfilled individual. A cursory glance at the table of contents reinforces this tight and unfortunately sometimes rigid organization. While such a structured approach allows for flexibility of reading—one can easily put the book down and pick it up again without worrying about losing one’s place—the repetition of main ideas sometimes feels forced. Much of each chapter is repeated from previous chapters even at the most basic sentence level. However, our tendency to repeat patterns within the framework of our own lives (whether positive or negative) may be seen as analogous to the structure within this text.

In the conclusion, Brady discusses the intention of this book as a means for the reader’s “personal and individualized introspective assessment” of his/her life. The question that spurned the author into changing her own life, why not?, is relevant to the reader as well. Why not give this book a chance to help you know yourself better and perhaps even assist you in changing your life?

Written by: Misty McCormick Chisum, February 21st 2007